Press

"Painter, sculptor, writer, musician, and for all we know dancer and magician, Vahe Berberian practices his multiple talents with respectful gravity and, at the same time, expressive abandon. Thus his paintings, which have been labeled “minimalist” because of their spare compositions and atmospheric voids, are filled, near to the brim, with gestures, notations, veritable diaries of thought and motion. Vahe invites us to decrypt his myriad markings, but the markings themselves defy translation: you either know right away what they say to you – and perhaps to no one else – or you puzzle eternally over their literal significance. Their formal significance, however, keeps you engaged, and you find interpretation, only to lose it again, then find another, then lose it, in a never-ending drift of meaning that very likely mimics the process by which Vahe reasoned these images into being to begin with. That’s why he paints – not only to say the things he needs to say, but to watch them float, expand, and metamorphose like clouds into things he never thought of saying. Our impulse is to call these paintings “hermetic,” closed in sense to all but their maker; but in fact we as much as Vahe are the determinants of their meaning. They are messages Vahe puts in bottles and sets on a psychic sea; they are saturated with the spirit’s brine."

- Peter Frank

“…Vahé Berberian sets his vigorous hand to more overtly painterly, as well as more inscriptive, tasks… springing into a modern version of manuscript illumination — not quite comic book, not quite expressionist phantasm, not quite doodle, not quite graffiti, and — knowingly, despite the title of the show (In Sanity) — not quite a madman’s markings.”

- Peter Frank, LA Weekly

“Discovering the very personal art of Vahé Berberian is like finding ancient treasure maps, like watching a child first declare his existence for posterity, and like climbing inside a weaving loom that hides the myths of hundreds of years of ethnic rites. The apparent simplicity of his images and scribbled messages has been achieved by mastering his skills not only as a visual artist, but also as a writer, director, performer, and survivor of life hurdles insurmountable by ordinary people.”

- Grady Harp, Curator

“…Vahé Berberian's paintings are reminiscent of the graffiti-like works of Cy Twombly and cartoon-like images in the recent works of Philip Guston. When viewing a gallery filled with Vahé Berberian's paintings, the viewer can see a repetition of process, and yet each painting is clearly unique. The artist's method is recognizable, his marks are distinctive, his "handwriting " is clearly his own, and there is a repetitive vocabulary of images that appear and reappear in his paintings. However, Berberian's paintings defy interpretation. He reveals only isolated words and never complete thoughts, his painting obscures as much as it describes. There is no identifiable context for his everyday words and images -- animal and human forms, umbrellas and rain, tables and chairs, along with various references to plumbing -- and yet, they appear again and again. It isn't possible to construct a single meaning for any particular image, because there are multiple possibilities and their meanings must be reconsidered each time because the context changes within each painting.”

- Noel Korten, Curator, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery

"If you took everything away from him it would not matter. For he would make art out of the air. I know, for I’ve seen his shadow work by the naked light"

- Michael Johnston, Playwright

Publications

2008 Yerevan Magazine: Fall 2008 - The Love and Anger of Vahe Berberian

2007 The Armenian Reporter - The Art and Life of Art

2005 Armenian Palette: New Generation by Henrik Igityan, Yerevan, Armenia

2005 Pakine - “Vahe Berberian: Art and Sanctity", Beirut Lebanon

2003 LA Weekly - “Pick of the Week,” Vahé Berberian’s In Sanity

2003 Armenian Contemporary Artists - From Ararat to Armenia, Catalogue

2002 Agenda: 4 Paintings - Arvest 2002, Los Angeles, CA

2002 Agenda: 2 Paintings - Sonia Rykiel 2002, Paris, France

2001 Modern Icon: Exhibition Catalogue - Los Angeles, CA

2000 AIM Magazine - April Issue, Los Angeles, CA

2000 Agenda - Sonia Rykiel 2000, Paris, France

1997 Agenda: 2 Paintings - Sonia Rykiel 1997, Paris, France

1996 Vahé Berberian: Pages From a Diary - Arvest Press, Los Angeles, CA

1995 Agenda - Pilgrims Also Die, Sonia Rykiel 1995. July 1, Paris, France

1994 Cahiers Intenpestifs - Editions S'printer, Saint Etienne, France

1994 Agenda - Balcony, Sonia Rykiel 1994. September 30. Paris, France

1994 Art Agenda '94 - Paradise Lost, AAA Publishing, March 28, Quebec, Canada

1992 Les Peintres du Desir - How Many Like Me" Noel, Bernard. Pages 156-157, Paris, France